Professor Karel Maca is a materials scientist with more than three decades of experience in ceramic materials research. He studied solid-state physics at Masaryk University before pursuing a scientific career in materials engineering at Brno University of Technology (BUT). Since 2011, he has been a professor at the BUT Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and since 2022, he has led the Advanced Multifunctional Ceramics research group at CEITEC BUT. His research focuses primarily on high-temperature processes in advanced ceramic materials, nanoceramic technologies, and the processing and properties of functional ceramics. Throughout his career, he has completed several research stays abroad, including at the University of Birmingham, Stockholm University, and Rolls-Royce in Bristol. Since 2019, he has been an Honorary Fellow of the European Ceramic Society.
His approach to teamwork, however, was shaped not only in the laboratory. He played football for more than 30 years, competing in the third division for Uherský Brod in his youth and briefly playing for Zbrojovka Brno. While he used to play as a central midfielder, today he compares his role in the research team more to that of a coach. He refers to his colleagues as “players” and, above all, encourages them to enjoy their research. Although he now spends more time managing than conducting research himself, he considers it all the more important to create an environment in which his team can develop their own research topics and take them further.
